Mention the author Ray Bradbury and many people will immediately recall reading his classic Fahrenheit 451, first published in 1953 and not out of print since. Fahrenheit 451 is a MUST read: prescient at its time of publication, and still chillingly perceptive in our contemporary social-media saturated world. Bradbury insists that books are not a luxury, but a necessity: valuable repositories of history, philosophy, critical thinking and social commentary. Barack Obama lists it as one of his favourite reads, writing that “Ray Bradbury’s gift for storytelling reshaped our culture and expanded our world.” I would add that it continues to do so today.
While Obama highlights Bradbury’s skill as a storyteller, what shines most for me is Bradbury’s engaging and emotionally affecting prose. The language is evocative and metaphorically rich, but at the same time accessible and entertaining, with a talent for making the mundane compelling. So it is not surprising that his memoirs Dandelion Wine (1957) and Farewell Summer (2006) are also must-reads.
Dandelion Wine, in its blend of real memories and imagination, follows the magical summer of 1928 with 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding. It is a reflection by the older Bradbury of leaving his childhood behind. Set in the fictional town of Green Town, Illinois (based on Bradbury’s hometown of Waukegan), Dandelion Wine is filled with friends and family who have remained with Bradbury, and who were instrumental in forming the adult he became. None more so than his Grandfather, who offers Douglas and his younger brother Tom homespun wisdom, and who instils in them the importance of appreciating the simple things in life. The dandelion wine his Grandfather makes each summer is a perfect symbol for the magic of his childhood summer; as he reflects:
June dawns, July noons, August evenings over, finished, done, and gone
forever with only the sense of it all left in his head. … And if he should
forget, the dandelion wine stood in the cellar. He would go there often …
he would close his eyes and consider the burned spots, the fleeting
scars left dancing on his warm eyelids… So thinking, he slept.
Written some 50 years later, Farewell Summer recounts the summer of 1929, a time when Douglas and his friends become aware that their childhood is disappearing. Lead by Douglas as commander, the gang of Green Town boys embark on an imaginary civil war with the town elders, who they believe are stealing their youth. A coming-of-age narrative, it depicts Douglas’s first kiss and his shame in defying his Grandfather’s wishes. The town clock represents the boys’ inevitable progression to adulthood, which they wished could be stopped at all costs. In his Afterword, Bradbury writes of his pleasure hearing again “the deep gongs of the courthouse clock”, and the thrill of being “kissed by a girl for the first time.”
Both Dandelion Wine and Farewell Summer are beautifully written explorations of the fleeting nature of a happy childhood, and how important it is to remember that time in one’s life. It reminded me to slow down and savour the small moments. Douglas’s making dandelion wine with his Grandfather each summer is the perfect symbol for the magic of those seemingly endless summer days. A fabulous read for everyone, young and old.
Both titles are now in store in limited stock.
An endearing classic of childhood memories of an idyllic midwestern summer from the celebrated author of Farenheit 451.
"He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled.
The street lights, like candles on a black cake, went out.
He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish.
Douglas smiled. He pointed a finger.
There, and there. Now over here, and here…
Yellow squares were cut in the dim morning earth as house lights winked slowly on. A sprinkle of windows came suddenly alight miles off in dawn country.
'Everyone yawn. Everyone up.'"
In the backwaters of Illinois, Douglas Spaulding's grandfather makes an intoxicating brew from harvested dandelions. Dandelion Wine is a quirky, breathtaking coming-of-age story from one of science fiction's greatest writers. Distilling his experiences into "Rites & Ceremonies" and "Discoveries & Revelations", the young Spaulding wistfully ponders over magical tennis shoes, and machines for every purpose from time travel to happiness and silent travel.
Based upon Bradbury's own experiences growing up in Waukegan in the 1920s, Dandelion Wine is a heady mixture of fond memory, forgiveness, magic, the imagination and above all, of summers that seemed to go on forever.
PUBLISHER REVIEW - FAREWELL SUMMER
A poignant and brilliant sequel to Dandelion Wine from the author of Fahrenheit 451
In Green Town Illinois, Douglas Spaulding is in the midst of a small civil war with the old pitted against the young in this, the second book in Bradbury’s semi-fictionalised account of his childhood. As the school board’s figure of authority Mr Calvin C. Quartermain attempts to outwit the boys at every turn, their antics increase and become ever more daring and mischevious. Once the shadow of winter draws across Green Town, the boys quickly realise that their enemy is not so much the senior members of their own community, but rather time itself which is ever ebbing away, just beyond the reach of their most daring trick yet: a bold attempt to sabotage the town’s clock.
